Far below my expectations...
Written: Jun 17 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast access speed. Able to read CD-R's and CD-RW's with ease.
Cons: Menu screens are distorted. Movies do not always play.
The Bottom Line: Poor video quality, was unable to access certain menu items, difficult installation. If you are looking for a PC-DVD drive, look elsewhere!
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| slipheed's Full Review: Creative Technology Dxr 3 Decoder PCI Video Card |
Introduction
The Creative PC-DVD Encore 12X w/ Dxr3 is a DVD player with an encoder card, mainly for computers that do not have a video card which supports DVD playback. One 5.25" open drive and a a free PCI slot is required for installation. The encoder card also supports TV-out and a digital audio out so that you can connect up to a 5.1 speaker system and/or play DVD's on a TV.
Installation
As I installed the encoder card and the drive, I found a small problem. Included with the package were an IDE cable, a video loopback cable, a cable to connect encoder card to sound card, and a cable to connect the DVD drive to the encoder card. According to the instructions, in order to connect both a CD-ROM and the DVD drive, you should pull the audio cable from the sound card, plug it into the input of the decoder card, and then use an included cable to connect the DVD drive to the second input in the encoder card as well. Another cable connects the encoder card to the sound card. However, the inputs on the encoder card supports a thinner 4-pin connection than the cable that the CD-ROM uses. So, with the supplies that I have I found that I could not connect both the CD-ROM and the DVD drive to play CD's at the same time. Even when I tried using the digital cable that came with my Soundblaster Live instead of the analog cable, I could not get both to work at the same time. So, in order to play CD's on my computer, I can only use one out of the two drives.
I've installed two of these drives: one for myself and one for a friend who I was helping build a new computer. The installation of her drive was fairly flawless. Windows 98 recognized the encoder card and the drivers were installed without any problems. With a restart, her computer was able to play DVDs without any problems. My installation however, was not as flawless. For some reason, Windows 98 would not always recognize the card. I tried all the troubleshooting techniques on their website such as changing the memory range and switching PCI slots, but with little success. I even removed my TV card to see if it was conflicting, but that also did not work. After playing musical chairs with the cards, I finally found a configuration that allowed my computer to recognize the card about 95% of the time. I have never had a problem with installing devices on my motherboard before, as everything else was recognized flawlessly.
Playback
After finally getting the encoder card to work, I played 3 DVD's on it to test it out. First up: Tenchi Forever. I noticed quite a bit of distortions on the menu and on the subtitles. Transitions from languages was fairly smooth however. Also on a few menu items, player would automatically click the button as soon as the mouse passed over it. This occurred mostly in the extras sections and not in the scene selection menu. Next was The Matrix. This movie crashed the player a few times and the playback was choppy at times. The menus were not as distorted as it was on Tenchi Forever, but a little distortion could be seen. Other than these few problems, the video was fairly good unless you looked very closely at the monitor. The last DVD I tried was Transformers the Movie. Again, there was a bit of distortion on the menus and a few menu items were unselectable or they would play the movie from the beginning instead. I had no access to the extras on this DVD. I also had gotten the same results from the player I had install for my friend. These DVDs have been tested on regular DVD players and on another PC-DVD player and all did not experience any of the distortions or menu problems that this Creative DVD player had.
The Drive
As written on another review on eopinions, Creative shipped different drives for this package. The drive I received had a play/stop button, but the drive my friend received did not. Even though we both had different drives, both our systems had the same video flaws.
Conclusion
I do not recommend this player. The video is distorted, cable connections are not compatible with typical CD-ROMs, and it was unable to access some features on a DVD. There were also hardware problems as well, and there were no contact information for support for the product. I went to their website, and it stated to look at your documentation for support information, which did not help any. I am currently returning the product to buy.com and I recommend any of you who are considering this product to stay away!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 130
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Epinions.com ID:
slipheed
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Member: Vernon
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 1 member
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